'Erase it, or be erased': Life on a Japanese mafia hit list

A polite man in a suit gave investigative reporter Jake Adelstein the message from a leader of one of Japan’s organized crime groups when he was first working on the story back in 2005: “Erase it, or be erased.” Adelstein backed off, but he didn’t stop researching Tadamasa Goto, a thuggish leader of the Japanese mafia, or yakuza. The second time, there was no message. In 2008, it was Adelstein’s sources who informed him his relentless inquiries had crossed a line. Don’t go home, they told him—Adelstein is originally from Missouri—America would not be far enough.

“There were two smart things I did,” he says over lunch on a
rainy afternoon in Tokyo. The first was to ask a mob boss for comment. “You
have to understand your enemy,” Adelstein tells me. Hinting to a rival faction
that he planned to expose Goto mobilized underworld as well as law enforcement
interest in his survival. And the second? “I wrote the piece.”

Before a story’s printed there is more incentive to prevent
it, he says. Erase or be erased became “publish or perish,” as he put it in Tokyo
Vice, a riveting firsthand account of
his work on the Japanese police beat published in October 2009. Tired—a chronic
insomniac now, he confesses—but affable, Adelstein appears relaxed about his
present security. Looking back, however, he is quick to admit, “It could have
gone very wrong.”

The piece itself was dynamite: Yakuza leader Tadamasa Goto jumping
the queue at UCLA medical center for a liver transplant, his 2001 entry to the
U.S. granted at the behest of the FBI for the promise of intelligence on a
yakuza operation laundering money through American banks and casinos. The
Japanese media wouldn’t run it; in fact, they ran a mile.

“We publish this, and not only will we have to deal with
Goto’s lawyers, we’ll have to spend a fortune on beefing up corporate security.
Retaliation will be certain,” one senior editor at a publishing house told
Adelstein. Foreign correspondents thought he was crazy. Eventually, after
meticulous fact-checking, the story was published in May 2008 by The
Washington Post, with a follow-up by Los Angeles
Timesthat included details of a $100,000 donation to the
Westwood hospital where Goto and three of his affiliates received treatment.

With still only tepid coverage of the news in the
Japanese-language press, Adelstein and a Japanese friend wrote it up as a
chapter in an anthology of “taboo” news stories of 2008, published in August
that year. His colleague Tomohiko Suzuki began receiving threats as well.
Adelstein hired a bodyguard. But by October, he says, Goto had been expelled
from the organization. Given the mob leader’s loss of influence, and subsequent
reinvention as a Buddhist priest, Adelstein says he believes the price on his
head has plummeted in value. Currently splitting his time between his wife and
two kids in Washington, and Tokyo, he is considering moving back to his adopted
country full time.

After 22 years in Japan, Adelstein is uniquely situated to understand
the risks for local journalists. Studying at Tokyo’s Sophia University in the
early 1990s, he set himself the unusual task of becoming the first U.S. citizen
to pass the recruitment test for the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper. Hired as a staff writer in 1993, he found
his way to the crime division and built up a network of police, yakuza and
media contacts. During our meeting, he frequently references hard-hitting
yakuza journalist Mizoguchi Atsushi, whose son was stabbed in 2006 following a
series of his father’s unpopular investigative reports. (Two men were tried and
convicted in the case but refused to reveal the mastermind behind the nonfatal
attack, according to reports on Mizoguchi’s Web site.) Mizoguchi’s own
warning from a mob source came in the guise of reassurance when he most feared
for his life, Adelstein tells me. This was the gist of it: Don’t start worrying
for at least the next five years—we won’t even try to kill you until then.

Indirect threats, vulnerable sources and family members, and
inadequate support from law enforcement in the form of programs like witness
protection, are all factors that make the yakuza danger intangible andhard to combat. Adelstein identifies the yakuza’s
preferred form of retaliation, which, he says, is usually a disappearance or
apparent suicide. He tells me of his survival strategy: “You make it clear you
won’t kill yourself.”

In Tokyo Vice,
Adelstein’s source tells him the story of Japanese director Juzo Itami, whose
1992 film Minbo no onna satirized
organized crime. Itami was apparently planning a new movie about Goto's yakuza faction and
its relationship with the religious group Soka Gakkai.

“Goto wasn’t happy about that,” Adelstein’s source told him.
“A gang of five of his people grabbed Itami and made him jump off a rooftop at
gunpoint. That’s how he committed suicide.”

Journalists themselves, moreover, don’t always rush to
defend investigative colleagues. Adelstein paints two distinct portraits of the
Japanese reporter, with the archetypes at war in the newsroom: Troublemakers
covering current affairs are working directly at odds with practitioners of
what he likes to call “pronouncement” journalism, those who make their careers
on the political beat citing press releases and official leaks.

Yakuza business operations often affect political and
economic interests, the latter’s bread and butter, says Adelstein—whose
reporting revealed that a talent agency with the power to grant ratings-grabbing
media interviews with some of the country’s top celebrities was run by
organized crime.

Tokyo Vice has yet to
find a local publisher, although in the age of the Internet, there is always
the option to release a translation without one. Adelstein promotes the book
via his personal Twitter
account, and it got online coverage in Japanese, including on a Web site called
Tokyo Outlaws, one of a handful
of upcoming media outlets he considers a powerful outlet for non-mainstream
reporting.

Adelstein also uses online articles, including on his
own bilingual Web site,Japanese
Subculture Research Center, to draw
attention to colleagues under threat. It is just a part of what he does to
advocate on behalf of others—when not reporting, consulting or working on his
next book, he is public relations director of the D.C.-based Polaris Project Japan,
which fights human trafficking. “If something’s wrong,” he tells me, simply,
“you say something.”

(Reporting from Tokyo)

Madeline Earp is senior researcher for CPJ’s Asia Program. She has studied Mandarin in China and Taiwan, and graduated with a master’s in East Asian studies from Harvard. Follow her on Twitter @cpjasia and Facebook @ CPJ Asia Desk.

Comments

>“A gang of five of his people grabbed Itami and made him jump off a rooftop at gunpoint."

Sounds suspiciously like a tough guy trying to take credit after the fact.

Ask yourself: How could a gang of beefy thugs toss a guy off of a roof in broad daylight without a single witness?

And if all Itami got after actually *making* a mob movie 5 years before that was a face-slashing, why would they take the incredibly risky move of bumping him off just for *talking* about making another yakuza film?

Adelstein loses a lot of credibility for either being duped or playing along with the mobsters' B.S.

Not another "Yakuza" film. "Soka Gakkai" related. Still Big No No subject. You have to live in Japan for a long time to know about it.

Also Itami's "will" was type written which
was very unusual for a man of words and art,
I think.
(Itami was a prolific writer as well.)

In addition, Japanese police's post-mortem examination is very infamously "Tekitou"-inadequate....

interestingly enough, Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe is Itami's brother-in-law and was disturbed by his "suicide" and the whole incident. His "fictioal" account on that,a novel "Changeling" is out in english now.
Yakuza and Uyoku (Right wing) are in his story, needless to say.